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Iggy Smalls

Iggy Smalls (b. 1992, Norway) is a photographer and image maker. She likes to tell stories through images – fictional as well as non-fictional and others as well as her own. Inspired by painting, Iggy uses arbitrary color in her work to convey an atmosphere or a feeling. She graduated with BFA in Photography & Imaging from Ringling College of Art & Design, in 2015. Currently she’s based in Badalona, Spain.

Panem et Circenses

By the end of 2016 Venezuela had an official inflation rate of 180.5%* (*data from The Wall Street Journal, July 2016) – one of the highest in the world. However IMF predicts it to rise to 1642% in 2017. The government is more than 10 $ billion in debt. Moreover Caracas has the highest murder rate on the planet – 24,980 lives were said to have been taken in 2014 by violence. But it is hard to find the exact numbers. Basic products like chicken and toilet paper are rationed out by the state – a state in transition. The left and right parties have been stuck in a deadlock over the last year. None of the new laws currently proposed by the relatively new, (mostly) opposition assembly, have been passed.

This series is trying to best convey what people in Caracas would talk to me, a foreigner, about – not so much the crime, not so much the protests – but everyday chores like not finding flour or bread, deterioration of infrastructure, standing in hourlong lines and how things used to be different. The colors in this series reflects the political struggle: red represents the PSUV and leftist parties; blue the opposition parties.

This is an ongoing project – last trip to Venezuela was 20/12/2016 – 09/01/2017.